Cash

As my meals and housing are graciously taken care of by the hospital, I've now racked up quite a few days here where I haven't spent a single rupee. Zero.

This strikes me as interesting, because in New York I feel like every time I leave the house (and often when I don't) money just sort of flies away on coffees and beers and newspapers and suddenly necessary taxis; it's always a bunch of small things, but then I realize that $30 or $40 is gone, and all I have to show for it is a mysterious stain on my collar, a couple of obscure literary magazines, and a hangover.

Here, walking around with 100 rupees in my pocket (about $2.50), I feel kind of loaded. For 4 rupees I can get a cup of coffee and some kind of bready street-food (that I probably shouldn't be eating); 13 buys a big bottle of water; 30 will get me a pirated DVD with Spider-Man 3, E.T. and Troy (all three movies on one disk, with Thai subtitles and the shadow of some guy's head through 30-40 minutes of each); and for 40 or 50, I can totally overpay for a rickshaw ride to just about anywhere in the city — I'm an easy mark for hagglers; part of me wants to bargain people down and get the best price, but I can't bring myself to stand around and argue over paying an extra 20 cents that I know means much more to the other person than to me.

It's not really an enforced frugality, since there's not particularly much I would want to buy, but it's interesting to strip off all the layers of what I might need in a day, and to not be accruing anything.